Pubdate: Mon, 14 Aug 2000
Source: Weekly Standard, The (US)
Copyright: 2000 The Weekly Standard
Contact:  1150 17th Street, N.W., Suite 505, Washington, DC 20036-4617
Website: http://www.weeklystandard.com/
Author: Matt Labash

Spend Enough Time With Arianna, Granny D., And Al Franken, And You, Too,
Will Favor Legalizing Drugs

Philadelphia - To survive the Shadow Convention, there is but one physical
prerequisite - a strong back. I am barely through the door of the
Annenberg Center before my accordion folder is bursting with handouts
from every flared-nostril revolutionary and bleeding-ulcer moderate in
possession of a Kinko's card and busfare to Philadelphia. Though the
activists represent disparate causes - from campaign finance
reform to stopping "crack kingpin" George W. Bush - they speak the
same strange language.

They all "mobilize" and "dialogue." They rail against anything bearing
the prefix "trans" (as in transnational corporation) or the label
"industrial" (as in prison-industrial complex). They have hair in
unpredictable places.

They have assembled at the behest of "recovering Republican" Arianna
Huffington, the media's favorite salon keeper.

Huffington's charm does much to compensate for her political
schizophrenia, so we journalists do our best to keep a straight face.
It is Arianna's hope, as well as that of co-sponsors like Common Cause
and financial backer George Soros (the pro-pot billionaire), that this
event will be the antidote to the conventional conventionsa - that
is, more engaging and less scripted. Arianna is not afraid to set the bar low.

The Shadow Convention is intended to address The Issues That Voters
Really Care About - or would care about were they not so
apathetic, a problem the Shadow Convention intends to address.

Hence, we dialogue about moneyed influence-peddlers. We mobilize
against the failed war on drugs.

We try to snore discreetly as the disenfranchised have their day. The
problem, of course, with making a big to-do about giving voice to the
voiceless is that when they start talking, you're expected to listen.

So it is small surprise when during the first day of the five-day
confab, trouble brews outside the convention. There, several young
women whose calves have never known a razor's burn are passing out
fliers saying "Hey Cowboy John McCain, How Many Indians You Gonna Kill
Today?" They are angry that McCain, who will be speaking shortly,
sponsored the Navajo-Hopi Relocation Act. They are angry about
"capitalism and indigenous repression." They are just plain angry.

Next to the press credentialing table, a gaggle of activists forms,
emitting an olfactory smorgasbord of patchouli resin, unwashed cargo
shorts, and the funky secretions that result from life on the
barricades. As I interview one of them wearing a Ralph Nader pin, her
friend sneaks up behind me, spies my notebook, and reports that I am
only recording sartorial details. "Can I see your press pass?" she
inquires, as if I would be interviewing her compatriot for fun.

The group is led by Andrew Rose, a San Francisco math teacher who has
been arrested 11 times to date. His forearm bears a Bic-inscribed
phone number: "Our jail-support line," he explains.

As I butt into the group's strategy huddle, I am kindly asked to
leave. "Why don't you just admit you're a cop?" says one protester.

But Andrew brings me along into the auditorium with his noserings
resembling small doorknockers.

Inside is a strong contingent of McCainiacs. They clutch his book.
They wave "McCain for President" signs.

And those are just the journalists. As McCain's family files into the
orchestra pit, brother Joe gabs with reporters, sometimes taking all
of two minutes before mentioning the Arizona senator's Hanoi Hilton
stint.

Joe is still sporting a "McCain 2000" pin, which he says he wears as
if it were a yellow ribbon from "when John was in Vietnam." Joe seems
unaware that it's been five months since his brother lost the primary,
though he's hardly alone.

John seems to have only recently received the news himself.

As Arianna takes to the stage to introduce the senator, she highlights
the need to "drive our political leaders into dollar detox." Andrew
Rose, who's sitting next to me, hisses: "She was married to a
millionaire senator!" "We are part of building a movement," intones
Huffington. "She's one of us," Rose says mockingly, elbowing Rookie
and Sharkey, "there's room in our movement for Arianna."

When McCain takes the podium to deliver his campaign finance reform
sermon and extol the virtues of his recent bete noire, Bush, Rose
and company, who have dispersed throughout the auditorium, heckle him
mercilessly. They repeatedly catcall "Hypocrite!" and "Indian killer!"
and bang the pole of a phony delegate stanchion (there are lots of
these at the shadow convention, bearing the names not of states, but
of states of mind, like "Disillusioned" and "Downsized"). McCain
becomes so rattled that he offers to quit his speechifying. The scene
degenerates into Showtime at the Apollo for white people - except
instead of getting hooted off the stage, McCain is expected to stay
and swallow his medicine.

Beating a retreat immediately afterwards, McCain pauses for a clipped
exchange with reporters outside the building. "It was fun," his lips
say, while his torqued grimace indicates it was an ordeal.

As Sharkey walks past the scrum, he admits the "action" wasn't his
comrades' best work. None of the media has any idea what their chants
meant.

But the harassment is at least effective enough to get McCain to skip
the advertised Q&A in favor of tending to important business ("He's
getting a cheesesteak," says aide John Weaver).

Such dramatics do indeed call for sustenance, but there doesn't seem
to be a concession at the convention (though Ben & Jerry's was
supposed to provide ice cream). So I crash the green room with
National Review's Jonah Goldberg. There, scribbling notes, is author
and professional scold Jonathan Kozol, sitting next to a plate of
sickly melon wedges.

After downing a Nantucket Nectar, Goldberg says we need to get back to
see the comedy stylings of Al Franken, who introduced his Stuart
Smalley character on Saturday Night Live many years ago, and who
hasn't stopped inflicting it on us since. "I'm writing a piece about
why Al Franken isn't funny," says Goldberg. Onstage, Franken says that
Arianna is doing everything for this convention: "For instance, for
the Shadow Cabaret, she's making the baklava." I ask Goldberg if he'd
mind lending me his premise.

The Shadow Cabaret is the Shadow Convention's way of leavening the
self-righteous histrionics of its daily harangues on campaign finance reform,
the failed war on drugs, and childhood povertya - issues that the shadow
conveners say the major conventions aren't addressing (though, in fairness,
the major conventions aren't addressing any issues). After hours watching
panel discussions in which leading lights of the media bemoan the media's
chronic obsession with the conventions (which they're all covering) at the
expense of covering Real Issues (which they would be covering if they weren't
so busy discussing media failures at media panel discussions), conventioneers
are treated at night to comedians, singers, and spoken-word artists like the
barefoot Michael Franti: I'm the trunk that holds the branches / The leaves
that do the dances / My flowers / Romantic / My love / Gigantic. His poetry/
Bad.

The Shadow Convention, however, is not all substandard entertainment
and "Free Mumia" chants.

On the second day, the shadow people get down to the serious business
of campaign finance reform.

Very serious, in fact. So serious that nobody seems actually to want
to show up, so the shadow conveners cordon off the back two-thirds of
the auditorium's seating with duct tape, forcing people to sit up
front so as not to spoil the photo-op. I run into Arianna in the hall
and we exchange air-kisses, her customary media greeting. I invite her
to join me and a large coterie of colleagues who will be crashing
late-night open-bar parties subsidized by lobbyists. "Can you bring
them here first?" she asks, looking at the half-empty auditorium.

Attendance is down because of McCain's absence, which is not to say
the proceedings are devoid of celebrity.

There is Granny D., the straw-hatted 90-year-old woman who spent 14
months walking across the country to emphasize the need for campaign
finance reform.

As Granny D. enters the auditorium in her fluorescent crossing-guard
jacket (perhaps unaware that she's no longer in danger of getting
mowed down by oncoming traffic), she suspiciously eyes the stairs that
descend to the stage.

An event staffer instructs her to grab my hand.

Though the woman walked 3,200 miles with a 25 lb pack on her back, she
seems unable to get to her seat without assistance. Once I deposit her
there, catastrophe strikes.

She discovers that both the text of her speech and her hearing aid
battery are missing from her bag. When a staffer determines that I
have led her to the wrong seat, he tries to tell her to relocate, to
no avail. She cannot hear him. "YOU NEED TO MOVE!" he shouts, alarming
bystanders, who are about to request that a panel discussion on Senior
Citizen Abuse be added to the docket.

Granny D. finally recovers her speech and gives a rousing performance
in a Katharine-Hepburnish, New Hampshire accent (Granny's "future" is
pronounced "fyoo-chah"). She basks in chants of "Go Granny Go!" It is
unclear if the crowd is enthusiastic about cleaning up money in
politics or simply relieved that Granny has successfully exited the
stage without breaking her hip.

The next day sees a significant attendance spike, as its subject is
everyone's favorite: ending the war on drugs.

Though the program is ostensibly not supposed to be dedicated to
advocating the legalization of drugs, but rather increasing awareness
of "harm reduction" - whatever that is - scores of young people
show up, many of them smelling as if they've just bathed in their own
bong water.

We are treated to the fulminations of Republican governor Gary Johnson
of New Mexico, who advocates legalizing drugs, and who will likely not
be long for the political world, with his declarations that "the
biggest issue in this country is drugs" and that "there's no positive
drug message" directed at children. (Indeed, it's never too early to
teach kids to shoot dope with clean needles.)

Likewise, Jesse Jackson ignites the crowd, though the Jackson
aficionados among us are disappointed that he can't find a word to
rhyme with "recidivism" (he manages however to decry druggies who go
to "jail sicker and come out slicker and return quicker"). From there,
he is off to the races with his boilerplate call-and-response closers,
"Futures Over Funerals! . .. Schools Over Jails! . . . Down With Dope,
Up With Hope!" Oops, wrong rally.

But the shadow performers who most readily inspire audience affection
are the Children's Choir from Minnesota, billed as being "composed of
children whose parents are incarcerated for drug-related offenses."
Though I'm not susceptible to great displays of emotion, I am darn
near moved to tears as the dozen or so little dears murder Curtis
Mayfield's "People Get Ready," then read their homegrown poetry
detailing the motherless existences inflicted on them by law
enforcement.

I go backstage to hear their stories and catch up with five choir
members, along with their adult tour director, Mattie Thomas, whose
business card says she is CEO of the Sisters of the Million Woman
March. The only problem is, of the five girls, only three say their
parents are in jail at all - and none of them for drug offenses.

One 12-year-old says she has an uncle on drugs (he's been in rehab
twice, but never in prison). Another 12-year-old says she hasa second
cousin in jail - for murder.

And a 14-year-old girl says her father is in jail - also for murder.

A defender of the choir's bona fides, however, she adds he was
probably on drugs when he became a killer (shooting a hole in the
shadow conventioneers' patter about non-violent drug offenders).

Mattie Thomas herself at least seems to be leading by example: She
admits to having done a four-and-a-half year stint for drug
distribution ("I was set up," she says) and is now on supervised release.

Thomas seems almost disappointed when asked about the discrepancy
between the choir's advertised, and its true, composition. "No,
nobody's actually in jail," she says, "at this point."

Despite the Shadow Convention's inanity and devotion to propaganda at
the cost of intellectual honesty, it has still been a modest success.

A seed was planted, a dialogue started.

Never mind if it's a dialogue many of us gave up on long
ago - when we left our dorm rooms, bad weed, and jug wine behind. (R)
- ---
MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens